Will Dowdy ('05)

“We do normal roofs that look like roofs and houses that look like houses,” says Will Dowdy (’05), an architect at the Northern California firm of Anderson|Kim Architecture+Urban Design. “It’s more traditional. It’s been done before, but it works pretty well, just like it has for a long time.”

This approach to architecture, one that prioritizes classical forms over novelty and fashion, is “quite parallel to what happens at Thomas Aquinas College in terms of education and philosophy,” Mr. Dowdy explains. “The architecture that we do is creating the built environment within which the City takes place — the City as understood by Aristotle and St. Thomas and the other authors that you read at the College.… It’s fleshing out those ideas and trying to envision the actual place in which the City can flourish.”

Mr. Dowdy received his training at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, where, at the school’s invitation, he earned double master’s degrees in architecture and architectural design and urbanism. In 2009, he was awarded the university’s prestigious Hammond Beeby Rupert & Ainge Graduate Prize.